Charity Commissioner wants govt concessions ended for 6 charity hospitals

According to sources at the Charity Commissioner Justice Ahmed’s office, since January 2013, nine charity hospitals were found to have either produced false information or not reserved the adequate number of beds for the poor.

While the Charity Commissioner had recommended similar action in October 2013 against three hospitals – namely P D Hinduja Hospital (Mahim), BSES MG Hospital (Andheri) and Holy Family Hospital (Bandra) -under Section 41 (clause 18) of the Bombay Public Trust Act, 1950, it has now added names of six more hospitals.

“A notice was sent to these hospitals, after which proper hearing was conducted. We took a decision to revoke all concessions after they were found breaching the guidelines,” said a source from the Charity Commissioner’s office. Charitable hospitals are run by trusts registered with the Charity Commissioner and having an annual expenditure of over Rs 5 lakh. These hospitals can avail benefits such as government or municipal land and electricity at subsidised rates and concessions on import duty and income tax.

According to the BPT Act, such hospitals have to reserve 10 per cent of sanctioned operational beds for indigent patients (those with income less than Rs 50,000 per annum) and provide them services free, besides reserving an additional 10 per cent of beds for economically weaker sections (family income between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh) and bill them the lowest for billable items.

State’s health minister Suresh Shetty said the issue of non-compliance of rules was raised two years ago, after which a committee was formed to inspect all charity hospitals in Pune and Mumbai in January 2013. Of the 79 hospitals inspected, only 11 were found complying with all the rules. “A monitoring system is under process, where charitable hospitals will have to do real-time reporting of current percentage of beds reserved. This has to be implemented to avoid breach of rules,” Shetty said.

While the Charity Commissioner’s first recommendation was sent in October last year, no action has been taken by the state’s law and judiciary department.  Following the first inspection, many hospitals were found submitting forged bills for surgeries not performed, while others were found catering to relatives of staff or to a particular community under the guise of charity.

St Elizabeth Hospital’s accounts head Reeta Davla said, “Our hospital is perhaps doing the biggest charity amongst all hospitals. Even if poor patients don’t have sufficient paper work, we do their operations. In fact, we are going beyond our capacity to reserve beds for the poor.”
Pune-based Cochlea Institute’s administrative officer, Kiran Khaty, said they would soon challenge the order in court. “Our institute is not even a hospital with beds. Then how can we reserve beds? We have been added in the charity hospitals’ list and I had approached the Charity Commissioner to remove our name from that list two years ago.”

tabassum.barnagarwala@expressindia.com